>The year is 1400 AD. You are a baby born into the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) confederacy in what will one day be called North America. You are well fed and cared for.
As in 2300 BC and 1200 AD, you are so "well fed and cared for" that you have about a 50% chance of dying before your fifth birthday, from the ever-present disease, starvation (the "three mothers" often failed to produce enough food), or violent conquest by a neighbor. Even if you survived the perils of infancy, your life expectancy is about 35, for the same reasons. The "abundance" of the past never existed.
But suppose we do go back. Earth's arable land can support at most one billion in this way (again, so much for "abundance"). Unfortunately, the global human population today is approximately 8 billion. Anyone willing to be one of the 7 billion or so that would have to be eliminated before we return to this status of happy equality, in harmony with nature and each other?
You said - 'The "abundance" of the past never existed.'
You are right that in the past we didn't have the medical advances we do today, and those are significant advantage in the quality of life for those who contract treatable conditions and diseases. Thanks to scientific discoveries we can now avoid or cure many problems that were once deadly. I wasn't disputing that. I just didn't see that as relevant to the question of how food is distributed when it is available.
However, the specific example of the Indus Valley civilisation (out of many such examples), and anthropological and archeological evidence shows that they were well fed and had a relatively high quality of life for the time in which they lived, without many of the conflicts and savagery that are often portrayed as having happened in the past. I'd encourage you to read more recent scholarship on pre-historic human communities, which have been discovered to be often more egalitarian than previously thought.
You said - 'Earth's arable land can support at most one billion in this way'
I am not a primitivist. I am not arguing for a regression in basic quality of life or that we should discard those advances that are beneficial for humanity. I don't know what I said that might imply that this is the only alternative to the earth polluting, wasting, destroying way we live now. I'm only talking about using the resources we already have in a more equitable and less harmful way. I think most people would volunteer for that.
> I just didn't see that as relevant to the question of how food is distributed.
Even if we leave disease aside, life was one of bare sustenance for most people in good years, and starvation for many in bad ones, no matter how equitably you distributed the food. The life of man, for the vast majority of human existence, was the *exact opposite* of abundance. It was a life of subsistence-level poverty at best, even if we ignore the ever-present threat of disease and war. Neither capitalism nor anything else destroyed previous abundance for the simple reason that it never existed.
You are replying to a point I'm not making. I agree with you that the past was more precarious (albeit to varying levels in different regions at different times). I'm not disputing that (although I do go more into that in the next article after this one).
The first point is that for most of human history food was not commodified - it was not sold - it was not put behind a paywall. (Sometimes it was even shared freely at large scale over large regions for long periods, and this still continues in smaller communities today.)
The second point is that we do produce more than enough food now - it is possible to feed everyone & capitalism is what gets in the way of that to maintain privatised ownership, prices and profits from food production.
The choice isn't just capitalism (with starvation for some) or primitivism with starvation for many. We have the science, the resources, and the ability to do better than either of these scenarios.
Not that it is relevant either way to those points ... but I would encourage you to challenge your assumptions on pre-historic human societies - The Dawn Of Everything, David Graeber & David Wengrow, 2021
<The second point is that we do produce more than enough food now - it is possible to feed everyone & capitalism is what gets in the way of that to maintain privatised ownership, prices and profits from food production.
As in the case of the imaginary "abundance" in the 190,000 years of the human past, here too, the exact opposite is the case. Privatised ownership, prices, and profits are the only way that actually produces food abundance. Whenever there is a communal or state system of food production, whether in Cuba, Venezuela, Cambodia, the USSR, Zimbabwe, or elsewhere, food shortages, indeed often actual famine, are an inevitable result.
I'll concede that if part of one of my articles is read in isolation it may give the impression you have taken from it - outside of the context of the rest of the article series. I'm willing to admit this could lead to misunderstandings, and wish I'd added more clarification. So perhaps I share some fault in this misunderstanding.
Nevertheless, you seem very focused on making an argument which I don't see as relevant to my larger argument, and seem to have no desire to address what I consider to be the more fundamental questions (whether everyone having food is possible, whether it is morally desirable, and whether capitalism is what gets in the way of that), but to challenge me on different points entirely. If I've not made myself clear enough I apologise.
I hesitate to comment on this side issue, but there are good and bad examples of food and farming reform, and you have selectively chosen the bad examples and ignored the good ones. Yet there are good examples of land reform which includes: Taiwan (1949-1953), South Korea (1945-1960), Japan (1945-1950s), Kenya (1960s), Guatamala (1950s), Kerala (1960s-70s). But again this isn't relevant to my position.
The bad examples usually involve situations in which either a) food production is put in the hands of those without expertise either due to their 'loyalty' in the case of authoritarian governments or because of their profitability (in the case of dictatorial capitalist ones). It also ignores the role of the role of embargoes, tariffs, and sabotage from capitalist nations in undermining such experiments. However, this is also not relevant to my argument - I am not nor do I support state socialism (especially of the Soviet style state capitalist form).
However, I am not proposing a choice between market capitalism and Leninist state capitalism, so this isn't relevant to me. If you'd like to learn more about the sort of stateless socialism I am advocating for you can find more information and examples here -
Wait, let me guess: you yourself will "enrich the community" by writing, teaching music, and doing other pleasant and nice things you feel like doing, while all those *other people* will "enrich the community" by, for instance, collecting garbage, stacking shelves in stores, and working in the sewer or in construction.
Also, unlike in the evil capitalistic society where they are paid to do such work, in your utopia they will "choose" to do so for free, because - being inferior to you - such work is just what their "talent" is, their natural way of "enriching the community." You know, just like in the plantations in the old South, where everybody agreed Blacks' natural talent is to pick cotton all day, and whites' natural talent is to supervise them.
Isaac Asimov had your number long ago, in an essay called "Best Foot Backwards." People like you always imagine the "good old days" - because they imagine themselves as philosopher-kings, poets, music teachers, writers, gentlemen farmers, or anything - but *never* as one of the unpaid slaves whose "contribution" is manual labor or other boring work. Their goal is, "up with slavery!" - or rather, "up with slavery for other people!"
You said - 'let me guess: you yourself will "enrich the community" by writing, teaching music, and doing other pleasant and nice things you feel like doing, while all those *other people* will "enrich the community" by, for instance, collecting garbage, stacking shelves in stores, and working in the sewer or in construction.'
Nope. I'll do the garbage collecting and stacking shelves and working the sewers or construction so others can focus on writing, teaching and music. Someone has to do it, so it might as well be me. Problem solved.
We still live in a world like the one you describe in which some can do pleasant and nice things while all those *other people* do the dirty jobs. In our world now some groups have less because of the circumstances they were born in while a few others have much more due to the privileges they were born with. There is still a poorer group producing most of the wealth by their work, while those who own (and have often inherited) capital reap most of the benefits (and believe it is their natural right to supervise others).
We can have a world without owners or slaves. There is enough for everyone if a few don't hoard so much and the many aren't kept artificial poor by the greed of those few. Our current economic system has coercion and exportation for the majority too - perhaps less harsh in some degrees than feudal or chattel slavery, but it is still an economic hierarchy of one group over another, at one groups expense for another groups benefit.
>Nope. I'll do the garbage collecting and stacking shelves and working the sewers or construction so others can focus on writing, teaching and music. Someone has to do it, so it might as well be me. Problem solved.
If you are truly willing to dedicate your life to helping strangers, there are numerous opportunities available in various charity organizations and religious orders (for example). You can join them right now. Why don't you, then?
Oh, wait - you will only be selfishly dedicated to the welfare of strangers in the future, when society is revolutionized and meets your standards of justice and equality. Well, in that case, I promise to work *twice* as hard as you to help others - but only once the revolution happens, of course. Problem solved! It's so easy!
You said - 'If you are truly willing to dedicate your life to helping strangers, ... Why don't you, then?'
What would possibly make you think that I don't already, and that this has given me valuable insights into the issues within our system that contribute these problems.
Your assumptions about me and accusations toward me - besides being highly inaccurate (not just of me but most I know who share my views) - also undermine your credibility. I'm sorry that you feel you need to resort to such tactics in the absence of better arguments, and I'm under no obligation to give you a platform for slander and misinformation.
Your assumptions of the past all happened in tribes, clans, or villages of ~150 people or less. That's the number of relationships the average human can manage.
In those times, when you were a child, you saw all the people you know, every day. Some would die, others would be born, but you had a relationship with every single person you came into contact with.
Yea, there were neighbouring tribes. Sometimes there were skirmishes, but they were largely performative, and rarely fatal.
Your 2090 scenario seems to require more than a tribe's worth of people. The wind turbines come from a factory somewhere. Do the windmill-builders get paid? Was there a capital investment?
I don't think our future as a species will be assured until we can limit our daily contact to only others we've known since birth, others we implicitly trust.
It will be powered by current photosynthesis. There will be no wind turbines. If we're lucky, there may be ox carts, though.
There are definitely very important reasons to have strong local communities, for those communities to have a good degree of self-sufficiency in essential areas where possible, and be able to directly make the decisions affecting those communities. However, this doesn't prevent them co-operating with other communities, and those collectives of communities co-operating across regions, and so on across the world.
There are many examples of up to several million people living this way over nation sized regions for hundreds of years. The Dawn of Everything (2021) book by the anthropologist David Graeber and the archaeologist David Wengrow gives many ancient examples, but some more recent ones too.
Suppose, like I was once, you're at the optician and you've asked them to fix the leg of your glasses back onto the frame. It's come loose. With a smile, they say they'll attend to that right away, if you'd just like to take a seat for a while. As you sit there, you see a basket of chews and toffees: a thank you from the optician, a sweetmeat to sweeten your day. You reach out and, without really thinking, pick one up, unwrap it and pop it into your mouth. And there you sit, chewing your chew till your glasses are ready. It takes a while so, presently, you reach out and go to pick another chew. There is no sign saying "one per customer only", and no one is particularly watching what you're doing. You could, without particularly being noticed, pocket the entire basket of chews. So: do you?
Well, it depends. If you live on the streets and have no income and see this offer of apparent generosity on the optician's part, perhaps you take them all. After all, you may not get the chance again for quite a while. But, if you have a home and a job and an income, you may not see a sign saying "one per customer only", but you may imagine one. You may regard it as unseemly to take two. They're a gesture and one does not take advantage of a gesture.
Yet, I've held the door open for people before and they really do march through without acknowledging you. Gestures are not always taken as a gesture: they are taken as rights. But what if I had a home, a job and an income, and still pocketed the entire basket of chews? That is capitalism. The chews are taken because they're there to be taken and, even absent a legal prohibition against taking them all, the mere fact that they can be taken is reason enough to take them. Capitalism is not predicated on what you do in particular, but on the way the capitalist rationalises what they do: they turn a gesture into an entitlement. The King of Tahiti who welcomed Captain Cook on his first voyage was less welcoming when Cook returned, after he'd appropriated the islands for his own king.
Just like people who march through doors that are held open for them. An aristocrat, a gentleman of breeding, may walk through the door with entitlement, but his equerry would tip the holder of the door a sixpence. Aristocrats buy their entitlement, or they earn it through victorious battles on land and sea. At least, their forebears did. Capitalists steal it.
So, what drives someone to be a thief, sorry, a capitalist? Nowadays the common word we hear is "greed". Someone is greedy if they take everything for themselves and leave nothing for anyone else. But that doesn't answer the question. It just describes a capitalist differently: why are they greedy?
I think it has to do with fear. The greedy are frightened of going without. That's what makes someone a capitalist. The chance of getting something for nothing seems like a stroke of luck decreed by heaven. They grasp at it because it elevates them out of the zone of fear. Fear of destitution; and they pursue their greed because the fear of falling backwards never properly lets them go. If they come to afford a mansion house, they fear falling back to a semi-detached bungalow. Because they've never trusted another individual, and they never will. Jeff Bezos doesn't like people taking a break from work to go to the toilet, because he fears that they may not simply do a wee-wee. They may read the newspaper, or scribble a ditty about him on the toilet wall. And that makes him afraid. It's not the time loss, it's not knowing what they're doing.
Anyone who has ever joined a theatre group will know the trust games that actors play. One classic is to stand on a table, and without looking behind, to fall backwards, without making any attempt to soften the fall. Behind the subject is the rest of the troupe, who link arms, like a guard of honour, and cushion the subject's fall and cradle them in an embrace of safety. I wonder if there has ever been a capitalist who played these - very serious - games. Who has learned to place faith, trust, reliance, in the group of which they form part. Trust and reliance banish fear. They instil a sentiment that, no matter how bad things are or will become, as a group we are able to depend on one another for that which we need. It's a philosophy that needs no reflection, because it can be observed in just about every other species on Earth. But we need to search high and low to find it in its pure, unadulterated form among our own species. That, I think, was what distinguished the society spoken of, of 2600 BC and of 1200 and 1400 AD, from ours in 2025: an ability to banish fear through mutual reliance.
These may be high-sounding words, but I will admit that I cower in shame when I say I don't know if I could achieve this myself. I did the table-falling challenge at the University Theatre Company, and I passed it, and I remember the glow that surrounded me as my smiling, laughing fellow actors caught me in my fall. But abandoning fear of financial deprivation: that presents itself as a large chasm. And I don't necessarily fear what is on the other side of the chasm. But I do wonder whether I have the strength of spirit to launch myself across it. Maybe there's a part of me that will always be a little bit capitalist. Or I need to find a troupe of good actors.
I think you’re making a lot of assumptions based on what you know. In 1200 AD if your parents wanted to murder, maim or otherwise mess you up they could and that includes starving you. You assume all people are cared for before capitalism? That’s such a leap. Every period has its good or bad, most of history it’s been bad at the bottom. We evolved this way as groups of people leverage what they know or have to cajole other groups to serve them. Not much changed.
It’s not that your article sucks or anything. Is that I like how my entire lifeline has been completely eradicated by the right only to them be completely eradicated by the left and now we’re gonna completely eradicate the rest. I literally caregiver for a child on my own. I have no family, so what happens in that world where we have to go backwards and depend on gifts from people who like us? So my kid starves cause I’m an asshole?
Why can’t we start imagining something new. Why is it always about going back in time?
Assumptions are something we need to do when imagining how life was in the past, so you're right. Except it's all too easy to assume, as you seem to do, that life then was no different to life now. And that diminishes the role played by capitalism in the past 300 years, which radically changed work life and home life, and colonialism since about 1450. Indigenous communities, in the Caribbean or northern South America, nonetheless still live lifestyles that we have long since abandoned. So, they can provide a model of what our lives were like back before industrialisation.
It was the Portuguese who invented both colonialism and capitalism. They discovered the island of Madeira, which they named for the resource the island provided them with: wood (madeira is the Portuguese word for the material). Nowadays there are no woods on Madeira. It is pretty bare of wood. They chopped it all down, did not replant it, and the Atlantic winds that blow across the island now prevent replanting. You can visit Madeira today, and enjoy its wines. Vines will grow, trees won't. The colonists came, took all the island's resources and then left again, and the people who remained make wine today.
Looking to literature, we gain a sense of what life might have been like in ancient times. King Lear tells us that disagreeing with a leader could easily lead to banishment, even if one was a trusted counsellor. And that treachery was to be found at every turn. But the Canterbury Tales tell us of a sense of community that would be hard to imagine in modern times.
When the loom made its way to Europe and textile production took off, there was a surge in prosperity, during the Middle Ages. That was marked with the introduction of feast days, high days and holidays. A public holiday was a very different occasion upon its inception to what it is now. Nowadays people make plans to depart with family to national monuments or grandparents, but they rarely do so with their neighbours. But the whole idea of a public holiday back then was that the entire town downed tools, prepared a suckling pig or something similar, and sat down together at a communal table to enjoy a day of eating, drinking and cavorting, with games, and fun, and, in the evening, perhaps a little nookie. A public holiday was "public" because the entire public celebrated it together. They didn't head for the nearest airport, and that wasn't because there were no airports, it was because the feast day was intended to cement relations within the community. These are things that give us insight into what life was like in those days gone by. There was far more inter-dependence, therefore much more interaction and much more cohesion in society. Modern public holidays have, quite honestly, outlived their purpose. We should just give each worker an extra 10 days, or whatever it is where you are, of holiday entitlement, and let them take it when they please and use it how they please, because that's more or less what they do anyway.
Now, there are some assumptions in there, but a careful perusal of anthropological history will give you insights into how societies today differ from societies in yesteryear and indeed how societies in some places today differ from other ones today.
The question you ask is whether we can’t instead have something different, from both yesterday and today. For that, we need to put our thinking caps on. Perhaps we need to look to the best of what both yesteryear and today have to offer us. From yesterday, community and sharing. From today, electricity and mains water.
Canterbury tales, lol that was a fun book (required reading in high school so it’s been a long time). Anyways, yes. We need thinking caps. But my perspective is that of a person married to a trustafarean
I tend to know how some worlds go. I have had the curse of privilege depending on how you look to it, to understand that rich people are used and abused by the very position they’re in. They’re not happy either. It’s safety we all lack.
I don’t think people understand the way these people group up or the plight of women. All stuff exceeding this post. But, imo, it’s better to be pragmatic and start appealing to those in all classes who want to maintain a society, at all - because trump is going in a bad direction, and he’s bringing power back to the family. That’s the kinship based economy we are in. He is fixing the attempt of modernizing the culture.
But, if only we could convince people that the best direction to ride a horse is the direction the horse is going already. People wanna make money. People feel safer with the ability to have upward mobility because that’s survival. All we need to do is eradicate dynastic levels of wealth by putting a cap on generational inheritance and redirecting the access and making taxes incredibly nominal.
Somebody making 200 million a year could potentially get away with very little taxes and might find that a much more palatable choice than playing Russian roulette for his future generations while Trump will be King .
All we have to do is make it so people don’t inherit more than 1 billion. not much has to change after that, we’re never going to eradicate people‘s desire to ‘be better than other groups’ of people so we sort of need to create a society that has room for shitty people, but prevents them from getting into such powerful positions that they eradicate other groups of people.
but of course I’m more of a techno optimist which I realize is really radically unrealistic and so I’m just spit balling for fun at this point.
I guess I just think realistically. Nobody is going to sacrifice their children’s future so to upgrade the life for someone they don’t know who practices a culture they don’t agree with. Why would they do that?
Taxes is theft but not for those at the very top : for them, it’s making a Great Leap Forward in human progress. That’s profound legacy.
We need to eradicate the billionaire class and make them save the golden goose, and we need to convince them that they will die founders of a new nation and be heroes .
We need to figure out how to combat radical right wing cesspool thinking - people want a future that’s more sci-fi. Nobody’s wanting to go back to medieval times- mosquitoes humidity. I’m not interested. lol , ya know what I mean (hopefully).
We need to paint a vision, a future. AOC, and maybe a tech optimist sorta person, someone who is ethical and wants to direct tech to support and augment the family as that’s the system that cares for elderly and disabled now.
We are in a game of competing families but the game is over now.
The families that one want to create a new monarchy.
All we need to do is eradicate billionaire wealth, and that’ll keep the game going perpetually
A person can make as much as they want when they live and when they die, everything goes into the general pot and every baby Citizen gets a hems trust, which is what wealthy children get. Hems trust is basic housing, education, medical and basic support.
Also, this actually repurpose is all of the lawyers and all of the fiduciaries and all of the psychologists that will be going out of a job as soon as AI takes over. That’s another reason why the Uber wealthy upper class professional class might be interested.. they get repurposed every family gets a lawyer, a fiduciary and a life care manager in the same way that I have one.
I’m poor as fuck, I’m on Medicaid and I’m probably gonna die. But I’m housed and I have a car. And if my son needs therapy or anything, there’s this trust fund for him . it’s not for me. That’s what every baby citizen needs to get every parent if they end up divorcing shouldn’t be plummeted into poverty, but rather they have somebody to consult a trustee, a fiduciary , it’s more of a community.
I guess I’m advocating for a hybrid between the family system that we have now and the economic system that the wealthy has . I’m saying we eradicate the billionaire class or rather eradicate diagnostic wealth after death in order to get these two big groups coalescing a little better.
This process will probably take about 1000 years. :p
I sometimes wonder what a blog is. It sets out its themes and its purposes in what it features as articles and contributions, and when we read these things, we are attracted to the message they convey. We are bees buzzing around a honeypot. But, unlike random attendees at a community meeting who perchance get into conversation over the coffee at the end of the proceedings, here on the Internet it works differently. In effect, the chances of our ever finding out where each other lives, what our circumstances are, whether professional or personal, and actually getting to know each other are remarkably slim. Most of the time, bloggers bounce off each other in the blogs portal that we inhabit, we exchange our views and we go on our way. And that, ironically enough, is the absolute antithesis of what I perceive the Peaceful Revolutionary as militating towards.
However, I already know vastly more about you than I know about many a member of the Substack, even about those who are members of my own. Some here end their messages with words like "We are all in this together", wherever "this" happens to be in their case. Or they write "For the full experience, sign up to a paid subscription". Y'know what? I did that once and found myself less in a forum of open discussion than in an echo chamber of acolytes who would brook no opinion but their own. And it cost me $5 to find that out.
So, let me reveal a little about myself: I have no children but my lack of offspring is my greatest regret in life. I give what I can to those who are less fortunate than am I, but I have very little to give. I too have a home and a car, and they are my saving graces because the work that I do is slowly but surely being abolished by artificial intelligence. I too cut my coat according to my cloth.
I can assure you that you will die. Here's what Vera Brittain, a feminist during World War I and who lost her brother in that conflict, said about death:
“I don’t think victory over death ... is anything so superficial as a person fulfilling their normal span of life. It can be twofold: a victory over death by the man who faces it for himself without fear, and a victory by those who, loving him, know that death is but a little thing compared with the fact that he lived and was the kind of person he was.”
What I believe matters more than anything is the fact that we lived, and the kind of people we were when we were alive. One of the most curious inspirations I have taken is from a man named Robert Roberson III. He has spent most of his life in prison, awaiting execution for a murder he has been convicted of and which I, along with many, many others of greater stature than I am, believe he never committed - in fact that no one ever committed (that is, in the end, the reason why they refuse to release him). His appeal to the Supreme Court of the USA was not even read by them. When interviewed some years ago, before his writ went to SCOTUS, he said, “I hope and pray that God gives them the knowledge for the people to make a righteous decision. I know I didn’t do it. I’m not guilty. So I’m at peace with the Lord.” Roberson's concern is more to be at peace with his God than with the bench of the Supreme Court. I find that inspiring, because it reflects the stance of someone who preceded Mr Roberson by 500 years.
When Thomas More, the English Chancellor who opposed King Henry VIII's divorce, is approached in the play A Man For All Seasons by Sir Richard Rich, the man whose perjury would secure More's death, about a high position for which he is not qualified, More says, "Why not be a teacher? You'd be a fine teacher. Perhaps, a great one."
Rich responds, "And if I was, who would know it?"
More replies, "You, your pupils, your friends, God. Not a bad public, that ... Oh, and a 'quiet' life."
Contentment resides not in having what we want, but in wanting nothing more than we have. Philanthropy resides in wanting betterment for those who cannot achieve it by their own efforts. A life well lived resides in living the life we have to the best of our ability, regardless of how long it is or where on the social scale we live it.
This was a beautiful post and I like that quote. I suppose I won’t go down with a fight. people are unaware of what I know from experience. when I die, someone else takes over and my son is at their mercy. we have a world that preys on disabled people, and the vulnerable. I am more likely to get robbed and played if I step out of my shell. It’s safe and isolating. It is a wonder I am not deemed crazy. But I am not. I have delightful neurosis that makes me charming and stubborn. lol. So I agree, a life well lived etc. but - the pain and suffering of women, the disabled, the elderly. It’s not necessary and its appalling - I wince at the old ideas trying to be recycled. I prefer to focus on what works after years and years and years of failing. \
I was like a cat. I was raised to be a cat. not a liberal with a litter box but a designer pet that was bred with a tabby so sorta fancy. and then I was a spoiled cat and then I got kicked to the streets and became a street cat. I got some upgrades due to arbitrary reasons from people who are long gone and dead and now I am a cat who lives better, until I am too old and then I get to be a street cat again. I have too much spirit to take all this without metaphorically clawing someone’s face off before I go. I would like to be maga but unfortunately, I am a cat with a lot of responsibilities and its totally uncouth to just be clawing people’s faces. I’m a crabby cat. lol
Okay, I have something else for you. What you feel is what I used to feel. A sort of grief. I wanted to make it big, but failed. The failure, as I much later realised, stemmed from my unwillingness to bend to the three weapons that our societies use against us: culture, ethics and morality. I'll return to these below.
In the film "Steel Magnolias" comes a scene where the mother figure buries her daughter. It's a scene charged with emotion, which I believe is very well played by the actress Sally Field. Here is a link to part of that scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywR0Pz-VDig.
In it, Field runs through the entire panoply of grief emotions. But they're recognisable. You may recognise some of them as your own in your own situation, because I certainly recognised some of them in mine. They are: Cynicism. Denial. Grudging gratitude. The mind and the heart. Tears. Anger. Desperation. Fury. Why? WHY? Resistance. Violence. Laughter. The last part of grief is always laughter. And grief doesn't always come after someone's death. You can grieve for your own life, as well as the loss of someone else's. But when you reach the stage of being able to laugh, you will know that you have freed yourself from grief.
Now, those three aspects of control over our lives:
Culture: the nature of our names, where we hail from (in France it is virtually impossible for a Muslim with a Muslim name to secure employment). But it extends to things like dress codes, or accents, or even shyness. If you don't dress the way your employer expects you to, you're out. You don't fit their culture.
Ethics: this is something that gets expressed as manners or respect. You must constantly show respect, for your colleagues, for your superiors and for the owners of the business you work for. Lack of respect will be thrown in your face without compunction. "Bad dog!" they will effectively say. The fact that high management are extorting the business's clients or securing government contracts with bribes, has nothing to do with ethics. Ethics is what YOU do. Not what THEY do. What they do is "run the business efficiently".
Morality: a single parent, two jobs, latchkey kids, homosexual, transgender, visiting night clubs, advertising for a man in the small ads? And don't forget your social media posts. These all add up to a moral judgment. It doesn't matter how well you do your work. If you're morally deficient, you're out. Remember the Tom Hanks film "Philadelphia", in which his senior partner, Jason Robards, sneered at the other partners in a partners' meeting, "He brought AIDS into our firm"? It was irrelevant that, to catch AIDS from Hanks's character, they needed to indulge in sex with him. The important thing was "he brought it to us", so he was morally deficient.
These three things, culture, ethics and morality, are not just used against workers and other members of our societies, but also in international relations, particularly those with divergent traditions to the "western, Christian model": China, Iran, Sub-Saharan Africa, Central and South America, and Russia. It is easier to castigate these civilisations than to try to understand them. Understanding them takes effort, and often ends up as a contemplation in the mirror: "If I don't trust them, they must be dangerous. They are incapable of trusting me, because I know no trust. I must destroy them, because I cannot find it in me to trust them."
I can recommend paths of exploration in these themes, but I don't want to seem overbearing.
You're not overbearing. You are thoughtful and kind and those are qualities I very much appreciate as they're not all that common. My grief and anger is unique in that - my grief is complicated and a lot of people get this diagnoses, when someone dies unexpected, young and tragic. I also was gaslit into oblivion. I've had insurmountable injustices, all of which would go viral , some of which I could potentially sue. I live 24/7 ALONE with a severely disabled person all alone, its all on me till I die. if I go to the world and say I need a break, they take my son away - there is no half way.
we still are running on rules that are supported by the church. This is beyond barbaric of a system. We have the biblical architecture for a system that died in the 70's and its been running on fumes since. I don't want to make it big - I want people to know. My son is a millionaire, and I'm poor. I am his caregiver. If I want to replace me, I would have to hire several people. I have problems a lot with hiring. The caregiver I have for only 12 hours a week for a break - I have to fire her. She's old and has a mortgage. This sucks. Nobody is happy in this system but the ultra wealthy.
I think anyone who has a parent with dementia or alzheimer's might get close to understanding because that is the level of work I have. I have a 2-5 year old in a mans body who is under 25, adorable and sweet but we have tough moments. this condition is so much work, so heavy, and so bullshit. If I wanted help I need money. I was locked up in a parents house until 45 on account she was taking advantage of my position and was stealing social security checks (so she could divvy it out like I'm 12). my anger and outrage and grief and heartbreak and sorrow is something that will never be honored because to honor this would be to acknowledge we all would rather live in a fantasy, then allow children to have parents (we call them orphans instead as only bio parents are able to parent), and we leave people high and dry and say its all their fault. We refuse to say environment has anything to do with a child's outcome on the basis of what then?
this value system of the modern era, is ugly, and going back in time to ancient ways of being also won't work. I shouldn't have to be besties with my caregiver so we need money and some semblance of a hierarchy. So I'm not saying roles are useless. but the value we project on people or strip them of value based on not making taxable income is sick and evil.
I feel like you mean well but I'm not sure if I understand what you wanted me to take away from that other than I rented Steel Magnolias for later tonight. I've never seen it, even though its super popular. but I watched the preview and already, its gonna be seen through the lens of that world does not exist anymore. because it doesn't and for many people, it never did exist. I think people really fail to see the cruelty of forcing people to be entangled so someone attends our funeral. I gave up my inheritance.
I have housing and a car. I know what that is like to not have that so this is plenty for me. I refuse to play the game anymore. I don't think people realize the games they play. People confuse the games as reality and those who are sitting on the bench not only don't get to play games, they don't get much of a life. That is grief. Just existing for someone else. My whole life. Quite literally. I wish I were joking but not. I have not had not one year, where I had a life outside of existing for someone else. I don't think people get what that is like and really, it's like in the matrix - there are days sometimes I cry, not because I can't see what was not actually the case. but because I wish I could go back and not know. The pain of suffering in ignorance pales in comparison to the pain and suffering whilst being acutely aware.
It's really sad but true. if someone came to me and said, take this and you can go back in time but you won't remember anything - I just might take it.
which makes ya wonder .. is that not what we have all done in the first place to even get here. It's the only shred of reason I have left. If life is horrible, what if we came here to escape something worse. and that keeps me going to take it, because for all I know, this version of difficulty might be an upgrade. I know, so twisted but that prevents me from giving up entirely.
there is no way of knowing what comes next and there's no way to know if what comes after is not any better or worse than now. I know this movie is gonna make me cry lol, I saw the preview. I think its her daughter who dies?
p.s. I like your take on ethics and I say this a lot too. making the better choice is not because I am better - like if I say, lets not be bad guys and win through nefarious means, is not a virtue signaling situation. it's because I know from experience those bad choices burgeon regret, not for the other person, but because it changes who we are. I'm happy to say I've been very stubborn in life so I've kept bad choices to a minimum. Which is why God was like, HEY - no cheating. And he made my few mistakes have GREAT BIG consequences. total bullshit this guy. I am not voting for him next time.
Starting around August I'll be focusing on a positive present / future setting for solutions to our current problems and ways to build a better world. I've written a few articles in such a setting already.
You are right that we are in a very precarious position at the moment in history, and so many people are struggling just to meet their basic needs, It is heartbreaking.
However, as many people think a better future isn't possible due to their assumptions of the past I find it useful to challenge those views from time to time.
Things weren't perfect in the 1200s, during Feudalism, our knowledge of science and health was very rudimentary and superstitious and many people died because of that. Yet feudal peasant parents still loved their children, cared for them, fed them, and brought them up as safely as they could. It has always been relatively rare for parents to kill their children, but back then they would have been part of communities in which something like that would likely be spotted quickly, probably more so than it would be today when people are less likely to know and interact with their neighbours.
I don't assume all people were "cared for before capitalism". However, I am encouraged that so much of the discoveries in anthropology, archeology, and evolutionary biology over the last few decades have shown that many people who lived during this pre-history human time were indeed cared for well, ate well, lived long, and were part of co-operative communities. A good book on this is The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by the anthropologist David Graeber and the archaeologist David Wengrow, 2021.
I would be interested in reading more about your takes. I do think you ought to consider the psychological reality. The way we ended up in the feudal system in the first place (imo) is the narcissistic family system (otherwise thought of as a criminal mentality, gang, “la familia”) and to this day, via generational inheritance (taxes and charity) they rule the world. there are no lizard people, no aliens. only sick people and unhealthy cultures riddled with pathological levels of personality problems and mental illness. we can’t blame either because to be an abuser after being abused, is an evolutionary advantage. the NPD system, damages their children to conform.
This way of being ,”to survive” by various networks (or tribes if you will), is never going to just die off so as to move to a system of love and support via human groups when those groups are more monstrous? It’s pretty much taking an hour glass and turning it over. I’m really rooting for someone on the left to get something that sticks but in the end, its us vs. robot dogs. unless there are groups who have the means to rally the masses and/or fight back in substantial ways, most people are stuck in survival mode.
I don’t really think most people are aware that we are fighting a fight that has spanned our entire human history. and to be “tribal” and force people to take sides is the issue. we need to stop punishing the children of opposing groups because that is how this all started and why it persists.
the Palestinians for example - my god, they are forever scorched with this memory of savagery, by people who are scorched with burns probably thousands of years ago. we all hate and fight for wars and battles that are not even our own. the oppressed fight and become the oppressors.
and history chases its tail. round and round we go.
the best lesson I ever learned was from a lawyer in a lawsuit - he said 2 things (I can’t change his personality) we had to work with what we had, and (none of that is relevant. we need to move forward from where we are now). those two lessons were needed to know information and I swear, its the two lessons lacking in nearly every advocacy group I’ve every read online - its a mentality ya know. I will keep my eyes peeled in August.
but know, while I’m interested, I’m a hard sell. lol
I’m doing my best these days to remain optimistic but the fog of hate has really tainted the well on all sides and I find I have to pull back too, so as to protect myself since the cloud of hate clouds the senses, most especially wit, humor and overall a persons humanity. I guess the moral of this ramble is that I’m dubious people are psychologically able to move forward to a better system without having an underclass (which does not mean a flat economy either , but just not having an underclass to look down on so the class of people can remain small, petty and insecure, like children).
sorry, I think trump era’s sorta turning me into an old crank. :p
You're right that these patterns of domination and trauma get passed down through generations, and a lot of movements just reproduce the same authoritarian dynamics they claim to be fighting against.
I do think we need to actually offer a way out of that cycle focused on healing those psychological patterns rather than just rearranging who's in charge. We need to build horizontal organisations based on mutual aid and consent, practicing healthier ways of relating to each other, and breaking the cycle of 'hurt people hurt people' by creating spaces where people can heal and grow.
We must 'move forward from where we are now'. We can't wait for perfect people or perfect conditions. We start building better relationships and better communities right here, right now, with the messy, traumatised, imperfect people we actually are. We need little pockets of sanity in an insane world, spaces where people can step back from the toxicity and remember what it feels like to be human together.
I appreciate your receptiveness, but I have to add that I think we all underestimate the tragic reality that often groups of people literally are never going to change, that it’s a part of their wiring at this point. Epi genetics and trauma science hopefully will inform whatever new frameworks and systems manifest. For instance, my mother is a psychopath, very sadistic but a covert abuser. When not in a position of power she’s a minion (perfect employee). These crazy dramas are often unavoidable so it’s leaving power to people is a problem. I really think it’s best if society created a socio economic wrapper for society / the family / communities/ and not allow people to be “in power” at all. At least not in a way that isn’t transparent and AI would have to be assisting with that to make it realistic. Like fire, AI can make us, or burn the whole thing down. It’s all about the centralization of power which is why I wince when people talk marx, not that I don’t agree. I just do not think any group of people would long term be some benevolent force, but a temporary thing at best until the next group takes liberty to enrich themselves.
It’s about the centralization of power that has been dubious of some (not all) socialist ideologies.
"States exist primarily to protect the interests of those who control economic resources, not to ensure everyone's basic needs are met."
If "the people" control the economic resources, then the state exists to protect the interests of the people AND to ensure everyone's basic needs are met.
This is why I am a socialist and why socialism needs the state. a) so we can collectively and FORMALLY own all of the economic resources, b) to ensure society is governed by cooperation rather than competition, and c) to enforce a social contract of mutually agreed upon coercion for mutually agreed upon benefit.
The common wealth of humanity - those extracted resources and developed technologies not earned by anyone alive today, is well more than sufficient to provide everyone a decent quality of life forever. Scarcity is *entirely* artificial.
I fear that 'the [small group of] people [who are meant to serve the majority]' when given hierarchal power will at some point focus on the protection of that power more than the needs of the people. This is why I'm a stateless socialist.
As Bakunin said - 'liberty without socialism is privilege and injustice, and socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality'
I'm a socialist who designs economic and political systems. Therefore, I have no fear of such an issue because it can be prevented. For example, the first article to a socialist constitution would make a ruling class illegal, not to mention all of the accountability institutions can be implemented.
This is why I don't take anarchists serious. a) because they refuse to learn political economy, and b) they believe in a myth and fantasy of liberty.
Why anyone would think Bakunin (1800s) is a serious thinker is beyond me. Its akin to thinking the Pope is a messenger of God.
There are plenty of stateless socialists who design economic and political systems. Some of them have been tried and succeeded in the real world too. I'm happy to give examples if you like.
I'd be interested in how your accountability over hierarchy system works, as I tend not to take state socialists seriously because of their bad record on reducing freedoms to enforce systems - often to the point that they become the kind of authoritarians they promise to free people from. But maybe you've solved it!
Accountability over hierarchy? I never said anything about having a hierarchy. You are making assumptions.
You are confusing state socialism with developmental states. That tells me you are not thinking in PE terms, you are just drinking the zeitgeist kool aid. In addition, having a state under socialism doesn't amount to "state socialism." This is your irrational prejudice clouding your thinking. Under socialism, the people and the state are one; they are the same thing.
Its actually, not that difficult to solve really. All it takes is to know PE and do some critical and independent thinking.
Repeat this phrase until you accept it: "coercion is inevitable."
Once you have accepted the truth of this phrase, then you are ready to ask yourself: "what should we do about it."
From here there are 2 options:
The First option is to have a free society based on competition, inequality, and outcomes determined by power and coercion. This will inevitably lead to a ruling class.
The Second option is to have a society based on a social contract in which people are treated as fully equal and society is governed by the values and principles of socialism. A ruling class is made illegal and outcomes are determined by cooperation and negotiation.
The Second option is the only way to have a civilized society.
You might not be able to imagine any alternatives, or may be willing to ignore examples to the contrary, but I don't have to choose between your two negatives.
You cannot have genuine 'cooperation and negotiation' while under coercive enforcement, because you do not fully have free choice under such a system.
Although you've already stated you believe freedom is impossible, so I suppose under what you propose we'll have whatever you impose on us either way.
Nevertheless until then, I won't confine myself to such narrow thinking and narrow choices, as unrealistic as you might consider me insisting on freedom, even if it is only a goal it is one worth aiming for.
You know there is nothing stopping us from practicing these ideals, gifting, mutual aid, tool libraries, free markets, food not bombs, the list is quite long and there is a lot of good literature on the subject https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-anarchy-works
The system makes it hard but not impossible to build a new world in the shell of this dying world eating leviathan but once you see what can be achieved there's no way to unsee it.
The places where one is able to draw a modern parallel with the world you describe as existing in 2600 BC or 1200 or 1400 AD are not easy to find, not within easy reach. The Javari River, which flows through Peru, Colombia and north-western Brazil could be a useful starting point. But it’s where Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira were murdered as they tried to defend the very people who live that way: the indigenous tribes of that part of Amazonia, many of which have little to no contact with our modern way of life. Some westerners, in their naivety, wonder why.
But I know of one example that comes close from my own experience. It is the Youth Hostels Association (originally a German institution, where they are known as Jugendherberge). For hikers and cyclists and even those in motorised vehicles, Youth Hostels offer basic overnight accommodation for a very low price. They’re not hotels: you must move on the next day, but not before you have performed a chore. Hoovering, or dusting, or washing-up or chopping firewood, anything to contribute to the community of which you were part for only a few hours. I never knew any visitor to a youth hostel who complained at having to do a chore, or who refused.
What this demonstrates is that it is possible to have a system of co-existence whereby the willingness to contribute to the communal bounty is not procured by duress, but by inculcating a sense of community (communes themselves of course exist based on this philosophy). Capitalists cannot understand a society that functions without the impulse of duress. They proceed on a basis that inextricably links the ability freely to take from the commune’s provisions according to need to a conclusion that that will result in theft, because theft is the only ultimate means of acquisition that the capitalist recognises. A capitalist is NOT a mercantile entity trading according to value, added value and realisable worth. That is TRADE, or COMMERCE, if you like. But that has little to do with CAPITALISM, which is predicated quite simply on theft. Trade relies on the purchase of inputs, the addition of value, and resale of the result with an honest mark-up. Capitalism is not trade; it is predicated on stealing. Theft of land, of resources, of manpower, of countries, of seas, of the bounty stolen by others. Capitalism is theft.
In his 19th century novel "The Ghost of Guir House" (which is available through the Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8182, and about which I wrote here: https://endlesschain.substack.com/p/levachan), Charles Willing Beale sketches out an existence of which we can, at present, only dream but which, perhaps not quite in the form Beale describes, once existed across our globe, before the Portuguese showed us the evils of capitalism on the isle of Madeira (see “The Invisible Doctrine” by George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison).
The idyll is called Levachan and a resident introduces Beale’s protagonist to its beauties and answers the "rapacity of thieves" with enticingly ingenious logic, thus:
“Here, if a man wants a coat, he takes it, and the owner reimburses himself from the great reservoir of the world’s goods, which is open to all men as integral parts of a unit.”
“What check have you upon the unreasoning rapacity of a thief, who will take ten times as much as he requires?”
“The system operates directly against the development of that trait. Here, men are only too anxious to have their goods admired and taken; for, being certain of their own maintenance, they feel a pride in contributing to that of others, and there is no temptation to take that which can not be kept, since his neighbor has equal right to take from him an idle surplus. Here the laws are the reverse of [y]ours, for here a man is encouraged in the taking, but never in the holding. Wealth is measured by what a man disburses; hence all are anxious to part with their individual property for the advancement of the commonwealth, knowing that the one can only thrive when the many are prosperous.”
Thievery in Levachan is pointless, for it is legal to thieve from the thief. And, because of that fact, nobody possesses more than they need, because no one will buy from a thief the surplus that he steals: they can take what they need from anywhere. There is no need for thievery. Two other sentences stand out in my eyes: "Wealth is measured by what a man disburses" and "The one can only thrive when the many are prosperous."
Beale’s work was written in 1897, in the age of the robber barons, which came to a crux with the Wall Street Crash in 1929, in the wake of which government gave Wall Street a leg up, poor flailing institution that it then was.
Enclosure was. and remains, a crime against humanity. But the problem goes much deeper. It's rooted in scarcity psychology and slave morality while neither of those things is useful much less necessary today. It also comes inherently from management complexity, the solution for which is degrowth.
I love the idea of degrowth. Just as I love the idea of tackling human-induced global warming. There is a similarity in the two, however. Because global warming is fast approaching, if it hasn't already exceeded, what are called "tipping points": criteria that, once they exceed certain values, can never be reversed. That is what we have in capitalism now. The capitalists are richer than the governments that govern them. And that is a pretty major tipping point, because there are individuals now who have more wealth that some countries do. How they got to that point is of academic interest, but how degrowth can be achieved depends less on academic analysis and more on manning barricades, I fear.
The instant that things can be seen as 'mine' and not 'ours', some people will have more than other people. If it's the difference between fish and chips and steak and chips, we might say 'OK'. But it won't stay that way. It changes, and rent goes up, so does the mortgage, and neither of us can afford steak. Or fish. Money begets money, if it collects in the building society, or the bank, it grows. If you have a lot, and you're clever, or have clever friends, it can grow on the stock market. But have you noticed how those people don't have to work the same way we do? However you look at it, the moment money, or possessions, or land, or what you own, or earn, exceeds other people, you are in a whole different world. And the strange thing about that world is that it likes all its possessions to keep on growing, by and large. There are exceptions, but they are rare compared with the many who believe in compound interest, the other name of which is,of course, capitalism.
The problem that arises is between who or what should care for those who can't care for themselves. The sick, the elderly, the neglected or mistreated, those who cannot work due to learning difficulties or mental troubles, or who have physical mobility issues with walking or their hands and arms, or backs. There are so many things that can prevent movement, or cause acute pain, some of which are not visible, like migraine or sciatica or internal cancer. And charities cannot provide all the care, cover all the costs, be present all the occasions required, and in particular give the support and encouragement, the human contact and friendship that any human might need if they live alone.
It's clear that more than optional gifting is necessary. Not least because careful enquiry proves that it is the poor that help their neighbours most. Government and Council backing is required. Taxation will be involved. There is no escaping the truth. The rich and the poor see suffering differently. Because the rich can pay for their suffering . And the poor can't.
>The problem that arises is between who or what should care for those who can't care for themselves. The sick, the elderly, the neglected or mistreated, those who cannot work due to learning difficulties or mental troubles, or who have physical mobility issues with walking or their hands and arms, or backs. There are so many things that can prevent movement, or cause acute pain, some of which are not visible, like migraine or sciatica or internal cancer.
All this is quite true. But it is a "disease of success" so to speak. Take the elderly (meaning, for most of history, people my or your age). Why they were respected? Because there were so few of them. Most people died before reaching 50 or 60, indeed most (50%+) before reaching age 5. When we have so many more elderly than before, naturally the status and care for any particular elder is lower.
>The year is 1400 AD. You are a baby born into the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) confederacy in what will one day be called North America. You are well fed and cared for.
As in 2300 BC and 1200 AD, you are so "well fed and cared for" that you have about a 50% chance of dying before your fifth birthday, from the ever-present disease, starvation (the "three mothers" often failed to produce enough food), or violent conquest by a neighbor. Even if you survived the perils of infancy, your life expectancy is about 35, for the same reasons. The "abundance" of the past never existed.
But suppose we do go back. Earth's arable land can support at most one billion in this way (again, so much for "abundance"). Unfortunately, the global human population today is approximately 8 billion. Anyone willing to be one of the 7 billion or so that would have to be eliminated before we return to this status of happy equality, in harmony with nature and each other?
No fair nominating others; any volunteers?
....thought so.
You said - 'The "abundance" of the past never existed.'
You are right that in the past we didn't have the medical advances we do today, and those are significant advantage in the quality of life for those who contract treatable conditions and diseases. Thanks to scientific discoveries we can now avoid or cure many problems that were once deadly. I wasn't disputing that. I just didn't see that as relevant to the question of how food is distributed when it is available.
However, the specific example of the Indus Valley civilisation (out of many such examples), and anthropological and archeological evidence shows that they were well fed and had a relatively high quality of life for the time in which they lived, without many of the conflicts and savagery that are often portrayed as having happened in the past. I'd encourage you to read more recent scholarship on pre-historic human communities, which have been discovered to be often more egalitarian than previously thought.
You said - 'Earth's arable land can support at most one billion in this way'
I am not a primitivist. I am not arguing for a regression in basic quality of life or that we should discard those advances that are beneficial for humanity. I don't know what I said that might imply that this is the only alternative to the earth polluting, wasting, destroying way we live now. I'm only talking about using the resources we already have in a more equitable and less harmful way. I think most people would volunteer for that.
> I just didn't see that as relevant to the question of how food is distributed.
Even if we leave disease aside, life was one of bare sustenance for most people in good years, and starvation for many in bad ones, no matter how equitably you distributed the food. The life of man, for the vast majority of human existence, was the *exact opposite* of abundance. It was a life of subsistence-level poverty at best, even if we ignore the ever-present threat of disease and war. Neither capitalism nor anything else destroyed previous abundance for the simple reason that it never existed.
You are replying to a point I'm not making. I agree with you that the past was more precarious (albeit to varying levels in different regions at different times). I'm not disputing that (although I do go more into that in the next article after this one).
The first point is that for most of human history food was not commodified - it was not sold - it was not put behind a paywall. (Sometimes it was even shared freely at large scale over large regions for long periods, and this still continues in smaller communities today.)
The second point is that we do produce more than enough food now - it is possible to feed everyone & capitalism is what gets in the way of that to maintain privatised ownership, prices and profits from food production.
The choice isn't just capitalism (with starvation for some) or primitivism with starvation for many. We have the science, the resources, and the ability to do better than either of these scenarios.
Not that it is relevant either way to those points ... but I would encourage you to challenge your assumptions on pre-historic human societies - The Dawn Of Everything, David Graeber & David Wengrow, 2021
<The second point is that we do produce more than enough food now - it is possible to feed everyone & capitalism is what gets in the way of that to maintain privatised ownership, prices and profits from food production.
As in the case of the imaginary "abundance" in the 190,000 years of the human past, here too, the exact opposite is the case. Privatised ownership, prices, and profits are the only way that actually produces food abundance. Whenever there is a communal or state system of food production, whether in Cuba, Venezuela, Cambodia, the USSR, Zimbabwe, or elsewhere, food shortages, indeed often actual famine, are an inevitable result.
I'll concede that if part of one of my articles is read in isolation it may give the impression you have taken from it - outside of the context of the rest of the article series. I'm willing to admit this could lead to misunderstandings, and wish I'd added more clarification. So perhaps I share some fault in this misunderstanding.
Nevertheless, you seem very focused on making an argument which I don't see as relevant to my larger argument, and seem to have no desire to address what I consider to be the more fundamental questions (whether everyone having food is possible, whether it is morally desirable, and whether capitalism is what gets in the way of that), but to challenge me on different points entirely. If I've not made myself clear enough I apologise.
I hesitate to comment on this side issue, but there are good and bad examples of food and farming reform, and you have selectively chosen the bad examples and ignored the good ones. Yet there are good examples of land reform which includes: Taiwan (1949-1953), South Korea (1945-1960), Japan (1945-1950s), Kenya (1960s), Guatamala (1950s), Kerala (1960s-70s). But again this isn't relevant to my position.
The bad examples usually involve situations in which either a) food production is put in the hands of those without expertise either due to their 'loyalty' in the case of authoritarian governments or because of their profitability (in the case of dictatorial capitalist ones). It also ignores the role of the role of embargoes, tariffs, and sabotage from capitalist nations in undermining such experiments. However, this is also not relevant to my argument - I am not nor do I support state socialism (especially of the Soviet style state capitalist form).
However, I am not proposing a choice between market capitalism and Leninist state capitalism, so this isn't relevant to me. If you'd like to learn more about the sort of stateless socialism I am advocating for you can find more information and examples here -
https://anarwiki.org/wiki/Anarchist_Societies
Wait, let me guess: you yourself will "enrich the community" by writing, teaching music, and doing other pleasant and nice things you feel like doing, while all those *other people* will "enrich the community" by, for instance, collecting garbage, stacking shelves in stores, and working in the sewer or in construction.
Also, unlike in the evil capitalistic society where they are paid to do such work, in your utopia they will "choose" to do so for free, because - being inferior to you - such work is just what their "talent" is, their natural way of "enriching the community." You know, just like in the plantations in the old South, where everybody agreed Blacks' natural talent is to pick cotton all day, and whites' natural talent is to supervise them.
Isaac Asimov had your number long ago, in an essay called "Best Foot Backwards." People like you always imagine the "good old days" - because they imagine themselves as philosopher-kings, poets, music teachers, writers, gentlemen farmers, or anything - but *never* as one of the unpaid slaves whose "contribution" is manual labor or other boring work. Their goal is, "up with slavery!" - or rather, "up with slavery for other people!"
You said - 'let me guess: you yourself will "enrich the community" by writing, teaching music, and doing other pleasant and nice things you feel like doing, while all those *other people* will "enrich the community" by, for instance, collecting garbage, stacking shelves in stores, and working in the sewer or in construction.'
Nope. I'll do the garbage collecting and stacking shelves and working the sewers or construction so others can focus on writing, teaching and music. Someone has to do it, so it might as well be me. Problem solved.
We still live in a world like the one you describe in which some can do pleasant and nice things while all those *other people* do the dirty jobs. In our world now some groups have less because of the circumstances they were born in while a few others have much more due to the privileges they were born with. There is still a poorer group producing most of the wealth by their work, while those who own (and have often inherited) capital reap most of the benefits (and believe it is their natural right to supervise others).
We can have a world without owners or slaves. There is enough for everyone if a few don't hoard so much and the many aren't kept artificial poor by the greed of those few. Our current economic system has coercion and exportation for the majority too - perhaps less harsh in some degrees than feudal or chattel slavery, but it is still an economic hierarchy of one group over another, at one groups expense for another groups benefit.
>Nope. I'll do the garbage collecting and stacking shelves and working the sewers or construction so others can focus on writing, teaching and music. Someone has to do it, so it might as well be me. Problem solved.
If you are truly willing to dedicate your life to helping strangers, there are numerous opportunities available in various charity organizations and religious orders (for example). You can join them right now. Why don't you, then?
Oh, wait - you will only be selfishly dedicated to the welfare of strangers in the future, when society is revolutionized and meets your standards of justice and equality. Well, in that case, I promise to work *twice* as hard as you to help others - but only once the revolution happens, of course. Problem solved! It's so easy!
You said - 'If you are truly willing to dedicate your life to helping strangers, ... Why don't you, then?'
What would possibly make you think that I don't already, and that this has given me valuable insights into the issues within our system that contribute these problems.
Your assumptions about me and accusations toward me - besides being highly inaccurate (not just of me but most I know who share my views) - also undermine your credibility. I'm sorry that you feel you need to resort to such tactics in the absence of better arguments, and I'm under no obligation to give you a platform for slander and misinformation.
What's missing is Dunbar's Number.
Your assumptions of the past all happened in tribes, clans, or villages of ~150 people or less. That's the number of relationships the average human can manage.
In those times, when you were a child, you saw all the people you know, every day. Some would die, others would be born, but you had a relationship with every single person you came into contact with.
Yea, there were neighbouring tribes. Sometimes there were skirmishes, but they were largely performative, and rarely fatal.
Your 2090 scenario seems to require more than a tribe's worth of people. The wind turbines come from a factory somewhere. Do the windmill-builders get paid? Was there a capital investment?
I don't think our future as a species will be assured until we can limit our daily contact to only others we've known since birth, others we implicitly trust.
It will be powered by current photosynthesis. There will be no wind turbines. If we're lucky, there may be ox carts, though.
There are definitely very important reasons to have strong local communities, for those communities to have a good degree of self-sufficiency in essential areas where possible, and be able to directly make the decisions affecting those communities. However, this doesn't prevent them co-operating with other communities, and those collectives of communities co-operating across regions, and so on across the world.
There are many examples of up to several million people living this way over nation sized regions for hundreds of years. The Dawn of Everything (2021) book by the anthropologist David Graeber and the archaeologist David Wengrow gives many ancient examples, but some more recent ones too.
In my article I, Pencil I go into how this decentralised hierarchy-less model might achieved advanced production, but there are real world examples too in open source software / hardware and elsewhere - https://peacefulrevolutionary.substack.com/p/i-pencil-the-true-story
I know I write a lot, I'm sorry.
What drives someone to be a capitalist?
Suppose, like I was once, you're at the optician and you've asked them to fix the leg of your glasses back onto the frame. It's come loose. With a smile, they say they'll attend to that right away, if you'd just like to take a seat for a while. As you sit there, you see a basket of chews and toffees: a thank you from the optician, a sweetmeat to sweeten your day. You reach out and, without really thinking, pick one up, unwrap it and pop it into your mouth. And there you sit, chewing your chew till your glasses are ready. It takes a while so, presently, you reach out and go to pick another chew. There is no sign saying "one per customer only", and no one is particularly watching what you're doing. You could, without particularly being noticed, pocket the entire basket of chews. So: do you?
Well, it depends. If you live on the streets and have no income and see this offer of apparent generosity on the optician's part, perhaps you take them all. After all, you may not get the chance again for quite a while. But, if you have a home and a job and an income, you may not see a sign saying "one per customer only", but you may imagine one. You may regard it as unseemly to take two. They're a gesture and one does not take advantage of a gesture.
Yet, I've held the door open for people before and they really do march through without acknowledging you. Gestures are not always taken as a gesture: they are taken as rights. But what if I had a home, a job and an income, and still pocketed the entire basket of chews? That is capitalism. The chews are taken because they're there to be taken and, even absent a legal prohibition against taking them all, the mere fact that they can be taken is reason enough to take them. Capitalism is not predicated on what you do in particular, but on the way the capitalist rationalises what they do: they turn a gesture into an entitlement. The King of Tahiti who welcomed Captain Cook on his first voyage was less welcoming when Cook returned, after he'd appropriated the islands for his own king.
Just like people who march through doors that are held open for them. An aristocrat, a gentleman of breeding, may walk through the door with entitlement, but his equerry would tip the holder of the door a sixpence. Aristocrats buy their entitlement, or they earn it through victorious battles on land and sea. At least, their forebears did. Capitalists steal it.
So, what drives someone to be a thief, sorry, a capitalist? Nowadays the common word we hear is "greed". Someone is greedy if they take everything for themselves and leave nothing for anyone else. But that doesn't answer the question. It just describes a capitalist differently: why are they greedy?
I think it has to do with fear. The greedy are frightened of going without. That's what makes someone a capitalist. The chance of getting something for nothing seems like a stroke of luck decreed by heaven. They grasp at it because it elevates them out of the zone of fear. Fear of destitution; and they pursue their greed because the fear of falling backwards never properly lets them go. If they come to afford a mansion house, they fear falling back to a semi-detached bungalow. Because they've never trusted another individual, and they never will. Jeff Bezos doesn't like people taking a break from work to go to the toilet, because he fears that they may not simply do a wee-wee. They may read the newspaper, or scribble a ditty about him on the toilet wall. And that makes him afraid. It's not the time loss, it's not knowing what they're doing.
Anyone who has ever joined a theatre group will know the trust games that actors play. One classic is to stand on a table, and without looking behind, to fall backwards, without making any attempt to soften the fall. Behind the subject is the rest of the troupe, who link arms, like a guard of honour, and cushion the subject's fall and cradle them in an embrace of safety. I wonder if there has ever been a capitalist who played these - very serious - games. Who has learned to place faith, trust, reliance, in the group of which they form part. Trust and reliance banish fear. They instil a sentiment that, no matter how bad things are or will become, as a group we are able to depend on one another for that which we need. It's a philosophy that needs no reflection, because it can be observed in just about every other species on Earth. But we need to search high and low to find it in its pure, unadulterated form among our own species. That, I think, was what distinguished the society spoken of, of 2600 BC and of 1200 and 1400 AD, from ours in 2025: an ability to banish fear through mutual reliance.
These may be high-sounding words, but I will admit that I cower in shame when I say I don't know if I could achieve this myself. I did the table-falling challenge at the University Theatre Company, and I passed it, and I remember the glow that surrounded me as my smiling, laughing fellow actors caught me in my fall. But abandoning fear of financial deprivation: that presents itself as a large chasm. And I don't necessarily fear what is on the other side of the chasm. But I do wonder whether I have the strength of spirit to launch myself across it. Maybe there's a part of me that will always be a little bit capitalist. Or I need to find a troupe of good actors.
I think you’re making a lot of assumptions based on what you know. In 1200 AD if your parents wanted to murder, maim or otherwise mess you up they could and that includes starving you. You assume all people are cared for before capitalism? That’s such a leap. Every period has its good or bad, most of history it’s been bad at the bottom. We evolved this way as groups of people leverage what they know or have to cajole other groups to serve them. Not much changed.
It’s not that your article sucks or anything. Is that I like how my entire lifeline has been completely eradicated by the right only to them be completely eradicated by the left and now we’re gonna completely eradicate the rest. I literally caregiver for a child on my own. I have no family, so what happens in that world where we have to go backwards and depend on gifts from people who like us? So my kid starves cause I’m an asshole?
Why can’t we start imagining something new. Why is it always about going back in time?
Assumptions are something we need to do when imagining how life was in the past, so you're right. Except it's all too easy to assume, as you seem to do, that life then was no different to life now. And that diminishes the role played by capitalism in the past 300 years, which radically changed work life and home life, and colonialism since about 1450. Indigenous communities, in the Caribbean or northern South America, nonetheless still live lifestyles that we have long since abandoned. So, they can provide a model of what our lives were like back before industrialisation.
It was the Portuguese who invented both colonialism and capitalism. They discovered the island of Madeira, which they named for the resource the island provided them with: wood (madeira is the Portuguese word for the material). Nowadays there are no woods on Madeira. It is pretty bare of wood. They chopped it all down, did not replant it, and the Atlantic winds that blow across the island now prevent replanting. You can visit Madeira today, and enjoy its wines. Vines will grow, trees won't. The colonists came, took all the island's resources and then left again, and the people who remained make wine today.
Looking to literature, we gain a sense of what life might have been like in ancient times. King Lear tells us that disagreeing with a leader could easily lead to banishment, even if one was a trusted counsellor. And that treachery was to be found at every turn. But the Canterbury Tales tell us of a sense of community that would be hard to imagine in modern times.
When the loom made its way to Europe and textile production took off, there was a surge in prosperity, during the Middle Ages. That was marked with the introduction of feast days, high days and holidays. A public holiday was a very different occasion upon its inception to what it is now. Nowadays people make plans to depart with family to national monuments or grandparents, but they rarely do so with their neighbours. But the whole idea of a public holiday back then was that the entire town downed tools, prepared a suckling pig or something similar, and sat down together at a communal table to enjoy a day of eating, drinking and cavorting, with games, and fun, and, in the evening, perhaps a little nookie. A public holiday was "public" because the entire public celebrated it together. They didn't head for the nearest airport, and that wasn't because there were no airports, it was because the feast day was intended to cement relations within the community. These are things that give us insight into what life was like in those days gone by. There was far more inter-dependence, therefore much more interaction and much more cohesion in society. Modern public holidays have, quite honestly, outlived their purpose. We should just give each worker an extra 10 days, or whatever it is where you are, of holiday entitlement, and let them take it when they please and use it how they please, because that's more or less what they do anyway.
Now, there are some assumptions in there, but a careful perusal of anthropological history will give you insights into how societies today differ from societies in yesteryear and indeed how societies in some places today differ from other ones today.
The question you ask is whether we can’t instead have something different, from both yesterday and today. For that, we need to put our thinking caps on. Perhaps we need to look to the best of what both yesteryear and today have to offer us. From yesterday, community and sharing. From today, electricity and mains water.
Canterbury tales, lol that was a fun book (required reading in high school so it’s been a long time). Anyways, yes. We need thinking caps. But my perspective is that of a person married to a trustafarean
I tend to know how some worlds go. I have had the curse of privilege depending on how you look to it, to understand that rich people are used and abused by the very position they’re in. They’re not happy either. It’s safety we all lack.
I don’t think people understand the way these people group up or the plight of women. All stuff exceeding this post. But, imo, it’s better to be pragmatic and start appealing to those in all classes who want to maintain a society, at all - because trump is going in a bad direction, and he’s bringing power back to the family. That’s the kinship based economy we are in. He is fixing the attempt of modernizing the culture.
But, if only we could convince people that the best direction to ride a horse is the direction the horse is going already. People wanna make money. People feel safer with the ability to have upward mobility because that’s survival. All we need to do is eradicate dynastic levels of wealth by putting a cap on generational inheritance and redirecting the access and making taxes incredibly nominal.
Somebody making 200 million a year could potentially get away with very little taxes and might find that a much more palatable choice than playing Russian roulette for his future generations while Trump will be King .
All we have to do is make it so people don’t inherit more than 1 billion. not much has to change after that, we’re never going to eradicate people‘s desire to ‘be better than other groups’ of people so we sort of need to create a society that has room for shitty people, but prevents them from getting into such powerful positions that they eradicate other groups of people.
but of course I’m more of a techno optimist which I realize is really radically unrealistic and so I’m just spit balling for fun at this point.
I guess I just think realistically. Nobody is going to sacrifice their children’s future so to upgrade the life for someone they don’t know who practices a culture they don’t agree with. Why would they do that?
Taxes is theft but not for those at the very top : for them, it’s making a Great Leap Forward in human progress. That’s profound legacy.
We need to eradicate the billionaire class and make them save the golden goose, and we need to convince them that they will die founders of a new nation and be heroes .
We need to figure out how to combat radical right wing cesspool thinking - people want a future that’s more sci-fi. Nobody’s wanting to go back to medieval times- mosquitoes humidity. I’m not interested. lol , ya know what I mean (hopefully).
We need to paint a vision, a future. AOC, and maybe a tech optimist sorta person, someone who is ethical and wants to direct tech to support and augment the family as that’s the system that cares for elderly and disabled now.
We are in a game of competing families but the game is over now.
The families that one want to create a new monarchy.
All we need to do is eradicate billionaire wealth, and that’ll keep the game going perpetually
A person can make as much as they want when they live and when they die, everything goes into the general pot and every baby Citizen gets a hems trust, which is what wealthy children get. Hems trust is basic housing, education, medical and basic support.
Also, this actually repurpose is all of the lawyers and all of the fiduciaries and all of the psychologists that will be going out of a job as soon as AI takes over. That’s another reason why the Uber wealthy upper class professional class might be interested.. they get repurposed every family gets a lawyer, a fiduciary and a life care manager in the same way that I have one.
I’m poor as fuck, I’m on Medicaid and I’m probably gonna die. But I’m housed and I have a car. And if my son needs therapy or anything, there’s this trust fund for him . it’s not for me. That’s what every baby citizen needs to get every parent if they end up divorcing shouldn’t be plummeted into poverty, but rather they have somebody to consult a trustee, a fiduciary , it’s more of a community.
I guess I’m advocating for a hybrid between the family system that we have now and the economic system that the wealthy has . I’m saying we eradicate the billionaire class or rather eradicate diagnostic wealth after death in order to get these two big groups coalescing a little better.
This process will probably take about 1000 years. :p
Eve,
I sometimes wonder what a blog is. It sets out its themes and its purposes in what it features as articles and contributions, and when we read these things, we are attracted to the message they convey. We are bees buzzing around a honeypot. But, unlike random attendees at a community meeting who perchance get into conversation over the coffee at the end of the proceedings, here on the Internet it works differently. In effect, the chances of our ever finding out where each other lives, what our circumstances are, whether professional or personal, and actually getting to know each other are remarkably slim. Most of the time, bloggers bounce off each other in the blogs portal that we inhabit, we exchange our views and we go on our way. And that, ironically enough, is the absolute antithesis of what I perceive the Peaceful Revolutionary as militating towards.
However, I already know vastly more about you than I know about many a member of the Substack, even about those who are members of my own. Some here end their messages with words like "We are all in this together", wherever "this" happens to be in their case. Or they write "For the full experience, sign up to a paid subscription". Y'know what? I did that once and found myself less in a forum of open discussion than in an echo chamber of acolytes who would brook no opinion but their own. And it cost me $5 to find that out.
So, let me reveal a little about myself: I have no children but my lack of offspring is my greatest regret in life. I give what I can to those who are less fortunate than am I, but I have very little to give. I too have a home and a car, and they are my saving graces because the work that I do is slowly but surely being abolished by artificial intelligence. I too cut my coat according to my cloth.
I can assure you that you will die. Here's what Vera Brittain, a feminist during World War I and who lost her brother in that conflict, said about death:
“I don’t think victory over death ... is anything so superficial as a person fulfilling their normal span of life. It can be twofold: a victory over death by the man who faces it for himself without fear, and a victory by those who, loving him, know that death is but a little thing compared with the fact that he lived and was the kind of person he was.”
What I believe matters more than anything is the fact that we lived, and the kind of people we were when we were alive. One of the most curious inspirations I have taken is from a man named Robert Roberson III. He has spent most of his life in prison, awaiting execution for a murder he has been convicted of and which I, along with many, many others of greater stature than I am, believe he never committed - in fact that no one ever committed (that is, in the end, the reason why they refuse to release him). His appeal to the Supreme Court of the USA was not even read by them. When interviewed some years ago, before his writ went to SCOTUS, he said, “I hope and pray that God gives them the knowledge for the people to make a righteous decision. I know I didn’t do it. I’m not guilty. So I’m at peace with the Lord.” Roberson's concern is more to be at peace with his God than with the bench of the Supreme Court. I find that inspiring, because it reflects the stance of someone who preceded Mr Roberson by 500 years.
When Thomas More, the English Chancellor who opposed King Henry VIII's divorce, is approached in the play A Man For All Seasons by Sir Richard Rich, the man whose perjury would secure More's death, about a high position for which he is not qualified, More says, "Why not be a teacher? You'd be a fine teacher. Perhaps, a great one."
Rich responds, "And if I was, who would know it?"
More replies, "You, your pupils, your friends, God. Not a bad public, that ... Oh, and a 'quiet' life."
Contentment resides not in having what we want, but in wanting nothing more than we have. Philanthropy resides in wanting betterment for those who cannot achieve it by their own efforts. A life well lived resides in living the life we have to the best of our ability, regardless of how long it is or where on the social scale we live it.
This was a beautiful post and I like that quote. I suppose I won’t go down with a fight. people are unaware of what I know from experience. when I die, someone else takes over and my son is at their mercy. we have a world that preys on disabled people, and the vulnerable. I am more likely to get robbed and played if I step out of my shell. It’s safe and isolating. It is a wonder I am not deemed crazy. But I am not. I have delightful neurosis that makes me charming and stubborn. lol. So I agree, a life well lived etc. but - the pain and suffering of women, the disabled, the elderly. It’s not necessary and its appalling - I wince at the old ideas trying to be recycled. I prefer to focus on what works after years and years and years of failing. \
I was like a cat. I was raised to be a cat. not a liberal with a litter box but a designer pet that was bred with a tabby so sorta fancy. and then I was a spoiled cat and then I got kicked to the streets and became a street cat. I got some upgrades due to arbitrary reasons from people who are long gone and dead and now I am a cat who lives better, until I am too old and then I get to be a street cat again. I have too much spirit to take all this without metaphorically clawing someone’s face off before I go. I would like to be maga but unfortunately, I am a cat with a lot of responsibilities and its totally uncouth to just be clawing people’s faces. I’m a crabby cat. lol
Okay, I have something else for you. What you feel is what I used to feel. A sort of grief. I wanted to make it big, but failed. The failure, as I much later realised, stemmed from my unwillingness to bend to the three weapons that our societies use against us: culture, ethics and morality. I'll return to these below.
In the film "Steel Magnolias" comes a scene where the mother figure buries her daughter. It's a scene charged with emotion, which I believe is very well played by the actress Sally Field. Here is a link to part of that scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywR0Pz-VDig.
In it, Field runs through the entire panoply of grief emotions. But they're recognisable. You may recognise some of them as your own in your own situation, because I certainly recognised some of them in mine. They are: Cynicism. Denial. Grudging gratitude. The mind and the heart. Tears. Anger. Desperation. Fury. Why? WHY? Resistance. Violence. Laughter. The last part of grief is always laughter. And grief doesn't always come after someone's death. You can grieve for your own life, as well as the loss of someone else's. But when you reach the stage of being able to laugh, you will know that you have freed yourself from grief.
Now, those three aspects of control over our lives:
Culture: the nature of our names, where we hail from (in France it is virtually impossible for a Muslim with a Muslim name to secure employment). But it extends to things like dress codes, or accents, or even shyness. If you don't dress the way your employer expects you to, you're out. You don't fit their culture.
Ethics: this is something that gets expressed as manners or respect. You must constantly show respect, for your colleagues, for your superiors and for the owners of the business you work for. Lack of respect will be thrown in your face without compunction. "Bad dog!" they will effectively say. The fact that high management are extorting the business's clients or securing government contracts with bribes, has nothing to do with ethics. Ethics is what YOU do. Not what THEY do. What they do is "run the business efficiently".
Morality: a single parent, two jobs, latchkey kids, homosexual, transgender, visiting night clubs, advertising for a man in the small ads? And don't forget your social media posts. These all add up to a moral judgment. It doesn't matter how well you do your work. If you're morally deficient, you're out. Remember the Tom Hanks film "Philadelphia", in which his senior partner, Jason Robards, sneered at the other partners in a partners' meeting, "He brought AIDS into our firm"? It was irrelevant that, to catch AIDS from Hanks's character, they needed to indulge in sex with him. The important thing was "he brought it to us", so he was morally deficient.
These three things, culture, ethics and morality, are not just used against workers and other members of our societies, but also in international relations, particularly those with divergent traditions to the "western, Christian model": China, Iran, Sub-Saharan Africa, Central and South America, and Russia. It is easier to castigate these civilisations than to try to understand them. Understanding them takes effort, and often ends up as a contemplation in the mirror: "If I don't trust them, they must be dangerous. They are incapable of trusting me, because I know no trust. I must destroy them, because I cannot find it in me to trust them."
I can recommend paths of exploration in these themes, but I don't want to seem overbearing.
You're not overbearing. You are thoughtful and kind and those are qualities I very much appreciate as they're not all that common. My grief and anger is unique in that - my grief is complicated and a lot of people get this diagnoses, when someone dies unexpected, young and tragic. I also was gaslit into oblivion. I've had insurmountable injustices, all of which would go viral , some of which I could potentially sue. I live 24/7 ALONE with a severely disabled person all alone, its all on me till I die. if I go to the world and say I need a break, they take my son away - there is no half way.
we still are running on rules that are supported by the church. This is beyond barbaric of a system. We have the biblical architecture for a system that died in the 70's and its been running on fumes since. I don't want to make it big - I want people to know. My son is a millionaire, and I'm poor. I am his caregiver. If I want to replace me, I would have to hire several people. I have problems a lot with hiring. The caregiver I have for only 12 hours a week for a break - I have to fire her. She's old and has a mortgage. This sucks. Nobody is happy in this system but the ultra wealthy.
I think anyone who has a parent with dementia or alzheimer's might get close to understanding because that is the level of work I have. I have a 2-5 year old in a mans body who is under 25, adorable and sweet but we have tough moments. this condition is so much work, so heavy, and so bullshit. If I wanted help I need money. I was locked up in a parents house until 45 on account she was taking advantage of my position and was stealing social security checks (so she could divvy it out like I'm 12). my anger and outrage and grief and heartbreak and sorrow is something that will never be honored because to honor this would be to acknowledge we all would rather live in a fantasy, then allow children to have parents (we call them orphans instead as only bio parents are able to parent), and we leave people high and dry and say its all their fault. We refuse to say environment has anything to do with a child's outcome on the basis of what then?
this value system of the modern era, is ugly, and going back in time to ancient ways of being also won't work. I shouldn't have to be besties with my caregiver so we need money and some semblance of a hierarchy. So I'm not saying roles are useless. but the value we project on people or strip them of value based on not making taxable income is sick and evil.
I feel like you mean well but I'm not sure if I understand what you wanted me to take away from that other than I rented Steel Magnolias for later tonight. I've never seen it, even though its super popular. but I watched the preview and already, its gonna be seen through the lens of that world does not exist anymore. because it doesn't and for many people, it never did exist. I think people really fail to see the cruelty of forcing people to be entangled so someone attends our funeral. I gave up my inheritance.
I have housing and a car. I know what that is like to not have that so this is plenty for me. I refuse to play the game anymore. I don't think people realize the games they play. People confuse the games as reality and those who are sitting on the bench not only don't get to play games, they don't get much of a life. That is grief. Just existing for someone else. My whole life. Quite literally. I wish I were joking but not. I have not had not one year, where I had a life outside of existing for someone else. I don't think people get what that is like and really, it's like in the matrix - there are days sometimes I cry, not because I can't see what was not actually the case. but because I wish I could go back and not know. The pain of suffering in ignorance pales in comparison to the pain and suffering whilst being acutely aware.
It's really sad but true. if someone came to me and said, take this and you can go back in time but you won't remember anything - I just might take it.
which makes ya wonder .. is that not what we have all done in the first place to even get here. It's the only shred of reason I have left. If life is horrible, what if we came here to escape something worse. and that keeps me going to take it, because for all I know, this version of difficulty might be an upgrade. I know, so twisted but that prevents me from giving up entirely.
there is no way of knowing what comes next and there's no way to know if what comes after is not any better or worse than now. I know this movie is gonna make me cry lol, I saw the preview. I think its her daughter who dies?
p.s. I like your take on ethics and I say this a lot too. making the better choice is not because I am better - like if I say, lets not be bad guys and win through nefarious means, is not a virtue signaling situation. it's because I know from experience those bad choices burgeon regret, not for the other person, but because it changes who we are. I'm happy to say I've been very stubborn in life so I've kept bad choices to a minimum. Which is why God was like, HEY - no cheating. And he made my few mistakes have GREAT BIG consequences. total bullshit this guy. I am not voting for him next time.
Starting around August I'll be focusing on a positive present / future setting for solutions to our current problems and ways to build a better world. I've written a few articles in such a setting already.
You are right that we are in a very precarious position at the moment in history, and so many people are struggling just to meet their basic needs, It is heartbreaking.
However, as many people think a better future isn't possible due to their assumptions of the past I find it useful to challenge those views from time to time.
Things weren't perfect in the 1200s, during Feudalism, our knowledge of science and health was very rudimentary and superstitious and many people died because of that. Yet feudal peasant parents still loved their children, cared for them, fed them, and brought them up as safely as they could. It has always been relatively rare for parents to kill their children, but back then they would have been part of communities in which something like that would likely be spotted quickly, probably more so than it would be today when people are less likely to know and interact with their neighbours.
I don't assume all people were "cared for before capitalism". However, I am encouraged that so much of the discoveries in anthropology, archeology, and evolutionary biology over the last few decades have shown that many people who lived during this pre-history human time were indeed cared for well, ate well, lived long, and were part of co-operative communities. A good book on this is The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by the anthropologist David Graeber and the archaeologist David Wengrow, 2021.
I would be interested in reading more about your takes. I do think you ought to consider the psychological reality. The way we ended up in the feudal system in the first place (imo) is the narcissistic family system (otherwise thought of as a criminal mentality, gang, “la familia”) and to this day, via generational inheritance (taxes and charity) they rule the world. there are no lizard people, no aliens. only sick people and unhealthy cultures riddled with pathological levels of personality problems and mental illness. we can’t blame either because to be an abuser after being abused, is an evolutionary advantage. the NPD system, damages their children to conform.
This way of being ,”to survive” by various networks (or tribes if you will), is never going to just die off so as to move to a system of love and support via human groups when those groups are more monstrous? It’s pretty much taking an hour glass and turning it over. I’m really rooting for someone on the left to get something that sticks but in the end, its us vs. robot dogs. unless there are groups who have the means to rally the masses and/or fight back in substantial ways, most people are stuck in survival mode.
I don’t really think most people are aware that we are fighting a fight that has spanned our entire human history. and to be “tribal” and force people to take sides is the issue. we need to stop punishing the children of opposing groups because that is how this all started and why it persists.
the Palestinians for example - my god, they are forever scorched with this memory of savagery, by people who are scorched with burns probably thousands of years ago. we all hate and fight for wars and battles that are not even our own. the oppressed fight and become the oppressors.
and history chases its tail. round and round we go.
the best lesson I ever learned was from a lawyer in a lawsuit - he said 2 things (I can’t change his personality) we had to work with what we had, and (none of that is relevant. we need to move forward from where we are now). those two lessons were needed to know information and I swear, its the two lessons lacking in nearly every advocacy group I’ve every read online - its a mentality ya know. I will keep my eyes peeled in August.
but know, while I’m interested, I’m a hard sell. lol
I’m doing my best these days to remain optimistic but the fog of hate has really tainted the well on all sides and I find I have to pull back too, so as to protect myself since the cloud of hate clouds the senses, most especially wit, humor and overall a persons humanity. I guess the moral of this ramble is that I’m dubious people are psychologically able to move forward to a better system without having an underclass (which does not mean a flat economy either , but just not having an underclass to look down on so the class of people can remain small, petty and insecure, like children).
sorry, I think trump era’s sorta turning me into an old crank. :p
You're right that these patterns of domination and trauma get passed down through generations, and a lot of movements just reproduce the same authoritarian dynamics they claim to be fighting against.
I do think we need to actually offer a way out of that cycle focused on healing those psychological patterns rather than just rearranging who's in charge. We need to build horizontal organisations based on mutual aid and consent, practicing healthier ways of relating to each other, and breaking the cycle of 'hurt people hurt people' by creating spaces where people can heal and grow.
We must 'move forward from where we are now'. We can't wait for perfect people or perfect conditions. We start building better relationships and better communities right here, right now, with the messy, traumatised, imperfect people we actually are. We need little pockets of sanity in an insane world, spaces where people can step back from the toxicity and remember what it feels like to be human together.
I appreciate your receptiveness, but I have to add that I think we all underestimate the tragic reality that often groups of people literally are never going to change, that it’s a part of their wiring at this point. Epi genetics and trauma science hopefully will inform whatever new frameworks and systems manifest. For instance, my mother is a psychopath, very sadistic but a covert abuser. When not in a position of power she’s a minion (perfect employee). These crazy dramas are often unavoidable so it’s leaving power to people is a problem. I really think it’s best if society created a socio economic wrapper for society / the family / communities/ and not allow people to be “in power” at all. At least not in a way that isn’t transparent and AI would have to be assisting with that to make it realistic. Like fire, AI can make us, or burn the whole thing down. It’s all about the centralization of power which is why I wince when people talk marx, not that I don’t agree. I just do not think any group of people would long term be some benevolent force, but a temporary thing at best until the next group takes liberty to enrich themselves.
It’s about the centralization of power that has been dubious of some (not all) socialist ideologies.
"States exist primarily to protect the interests of those who control economic resources, not to ensure everyone's basic needs are met."
If "the people" control the economic resources, then the state exists to protect the interests of the people AND to ensure everyone's basic needs are met.
This is why I am a socialist and why socialism needs the state. a) so we can collectively and FORMALLY own all of the economic resources, b) to ensure society is governed by cooperation rather than competition, and c) to enforce a social contract of mutually agreed upon coercion for mutually agreed upon benefit.
The common wealth of humanity - those extracted resources and developed technologies not earned by anyone alive today, is well more than sufficient to provide everyone a decent quality of life forever. Scarcity is *entirely* artificial.
I fear that 'the [small group of] people [who are meant to serve the majority]' when given hierarchal power will at some point focus on the protection of that power more than the needs of the people. This is why I'm a stateless socialist.
As Bakunin said - 'liberty without socialism is privilege and injustice, and socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality'
https://peacefulrevolutionary.substack.com/p/justification-for-hierarchy-under
I'm a socialist who designs economic and political systems. Therefore, I have no fear of such an issue because it can be prevented. For example, the first article to a socialist constitution would make a ruling class illegal, not to mention all of the accountability institutions can be implemented.
This is why I don't take anarchists serious. a) because they refuse to learn political economy, and b) they believe in a myth and fantasy of liberty.
Why anyone would think Bakunin (1800s) is a serious thinker is beyond me. Its akin to thinking the Pope is a messenger of God.
There are plenty of stateless socialists who design economic and political systems. Some of them have been tried and succeeded in the real world too. I'm happy to give examples if you like.
I'd be interested in how your accountability over hierarchy system works, as I tend not to take state socialists seriously because of their bad record on reducing freedoms to enforce systems - often to the point that they become the kind of authoritarians they promise to free people from. But maybe you've solved it!
Accountability over hierarchy? I never said anything about having a hierarchy. You are making assumptions.
You are confusing state socialism with developmental states. That tells me you are not thinking in PE terms, you are just drinking the zeitgeist kool aid. In addition, having a state under socialism doesn't amount to "state socialism." This is your irrational prejudice clouding your thinking. Under socialism, the people and the state are one; they are the same thing.
Its actually, not that difficult to solve really. All it takes is to know PE and do some critical and independent thinking.
Freedom is a myth and for religious type people.
Repeat this phrase until you accept it: "coercion is inevitable."
Once you have accepted the truth of this phrase, then you are ready to ask yourself: "what should we do about it."
From here there are 2 options:
The First option is to have a free society based on competition, inequality, and outcomes determined by power and coercion. This will inevitably lead to a ruling class.
The Second option is to have a society based on a social contract in which people are treated as fully equal and society is governed by the values and principles of socialism. A ruling class is made illegal and outcomes are determined by cooperation and negotiation.
The Second option is the only way to have a civilized society.
You might not be able to imagine any alternatives, or may be willing to ignore examples to the contrary, but I don't have to choose between your two negatives.
You cannot have genuine 'cooperation and negotiation' while under coercive enforcement, because you do not fully have free choice under such a system.
Although you've already stated you believe freedom is impossible, so I suppose under what you propose we'll have whatever you impose on us either way.
Nevertheless until then, I won't confine myself to such narrow thinking and narrow choices, as unrealistic as you might consider me insisting on freedom, even if it is only a goal it is one worth aiming for.
You know there is nothing stopping us from practicing these ideals, gifting, mutual aid, tool libraries, free markets, food not bombs, the list is quite long and there is a lot of good literature on the subject https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-anarchy-works
The system makes it hard but not impossible to build a new world in the shell of this dying world eating leviathan but once you see what can be achieved there's no way to unsee it.
The places where one is able to draw a modern parallel with the world you describe as existing in 2600 BC or 1200 or 1400 AD are not easy to find, not within easy reach. The Javari River, which flows through Peru, Colombia and north-western Brazil could be a useful starting point. But it’s where Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira were murdered as they tried to defend the very people who live that way: the indigenous tribes of that part of Amazonia, many of which have little to no contact with our modern way of life. Some westerners, in their naivety, wonder why.
But I know of one example that comes close from my own experience. It is the Youth Hostels Association (originally a German institution, where they are known as Jugendherberge). For hikers and cyclists and even those in motorised vehicles, Youth Hostels offer basic overnight accommodation for a very low price. They’re not hotels: you must move on the next day, but not before you have performed a chore. Hoovering, or dusting, or washing-up or chopping firewood, anything to contribute to the community of which you were part for only a few hours. I never knew any visitor to a youth hostel who complained at having to do a chore, or who refused.
What this demonstrates is that it is possible to have a system of co-existence whereby the willingness to contribute to the communal bounty is not procured by duress, but by inculcating a sense of community (communes themselves of course exist based on this philosophy). Capitalists cannot understand a society that functions without the impulse of duress. They proceed on a basis that inextricably links the ability freely to take from the commune’s provisions according to need to a conclusion that that will result in theft, because theft is the only ultimate means of acquisition that the capitalist recognises. A capitalist is NOT a mercantile entity trading according to value, added value and realisable worth. That is TRADE, or COMMERCE, if you like. But that has little to do with CAPITALISM, which is predicated quite simply on theft. Trade relies on the purchase of inputs, the addition of value, and resale of the result with an honest mark-up. Capitalism is not trade; it is predicated on stealing. Theft of land, of resources, of manpower, of countries, of seas, of the bounty stolen by others. Capitalism is theft.
In his 19th century novel "The Ghost of Guir House" (which is available through the Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8182, and about which I wrote here: https://endlesschain.substack.com/p/levachan), Charles Willing Beale sketches out an existence of which we can, at present, only dream but which, perhaps not quite in the form Beale describes, once existed across our globe, before the Portuguese showed us the evils of capitalism on the isle of Madeira (see “The Invisible Doctrine” by George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison).
The idyll is called Levachan and a resident introduces Beale’s protagonist to its beauties and answers the "rapacity of thieves" with enticingly ingenious logic, thus:
“Here, if a man wants a coat, he takes it, and the owner reimburses himself from the great reservoir of the world’s goods, which is open to all men as integral parts of a unit.”
“What check have you upon the unreasoning rapacity of a thief, who will take ten times as much as he requires?”
“The system operates directly against the development of that trait. Here, men are only too anxious to have their goods admired and taken; for, being certain of their own maintenance, they feel a pride in contributing to that of others, and there is no temptation to take that which can not be kept, since his neighbor has equal right to take from him an idle surplus. Here the laws are the reverse of [y]ours, for here a man is encouraged in the taking, but never in the holding. Wealth is measured by what a man disburses; hence all are anxious to part with their individual property for the advancement of the commonwealth, knowing that the one can only thrive when the many are prosperous.”
Thievery in Levachan is pointless, for it is legal to thieve from the thief. And, because of that fact, nobody possesses more than they need, because no one will buy from a thief the surplus that he steals: they can take what they need from anywhere. There is no need for thievery. Two other sentences stand out in my eyes: "Wealth is measured by what a man disburses" and "The one can only thrive when the many are prosperous."
Beale’s work was written in 1897, in the age of the robber barons, which came to a crux with the Wall Street Crash in 1929, in the wake of which government gave Wall Street a leg up, poor flailing institution that it then was.
Wonderful! I too envision this future.
Enclosure was. and remains, a crime against humanity. But the problem goes much deeper. It's rooted in scarcity psychology and slave morality while neither of those things is useful much less necessary today. It also comes inherently from management complexity, the solution for which is degrowth.
I love the idea of degrowth. Just as I love the idea of tackling human-induced global warming. There is a similarity in the two, however. Because global warming is fast approaching, if it hasn't already exceeded, what are called "tipping points": criteria that, once they exceed certain values, can never be reversed. That is what we have in capitalism now. The capitalists are richer than the governments that govern them. And that is a pretty major tipping point, because there are individuals now who have more wealth that some countries do. How they got to that point is of academic interest, but how degrowth can be achieved depends less on academic analysis and more on manning barricades, I fear.
The instant that things can be seen as 'mine' and not 'ours', some people will have more than other people. If it's the difference between fish and chips and steak and chips, we might say 'OK'. But it won't stay that way. It changes, and rent goes up, so does the mortgage, and neither of us can afford steak. Or fish. Money begets money, if it collects in the building society, or the bank, it grows. If you have a lot, and you're clever, or have clever friends, it can grow on the stock market. But have you noticed how those people don't have to work the same way we do? However you look at it, the moment money, or possessions, or land, or what you own, or earn, exceeds other people, you are in a whole different world. And the strange thing about that world is that it likes all its possessions to keep on growing, by and large. There are exceptions, but they are rare compared with the many who believe in compound interest, the other name of which is,of course, capitalism.
The problem that arises is between who or what should care for those who can't care for themselves. The sick, the elderly, the neglected or mistreated, those who cannot work due to learning difficulties or mental troubles, or who have physical mobility issues with walking or their hands and arms, or backs. There are so many things that can prevent movement, or cause acute pain, some of which are not visible, like migraine or sciatica or internal cancer. And charities cannot provide all the care, cover all the costs, be present all the occasions required, and in particular give the support and encouragement, the human contact and friendship that any human might need if they live alone.
It's clear that more than optional gifting is necessary. Not least because careful enquiry proves that it is the poor that help their neighbours most. Government and Council backing is required. Taxation will be involved. There is no escaping the truth. The rich and the poor see suffering differently. Because the rich can pay for their suffering . And the poor can't.
>The problem that arises is between who or what should care for those who can't care for themselves. The sick, the elderly, the neglected or mistreated, those who cannot work due to learning difficulties or mental troubles, or who have physical mobility issues with walking or their hands and arms, or backs. There are so many things that can prevent movement, or cause acute pain, some of which are not visible, like migraine or sciatica or internal cancer.
All this is quite true. But it is a "disease of success" so to speak. Take the elderly (meaning, for most of history, people my or your age). Why they were respected? Because there were so few of them. Most people died before reaching 50 or 60, indeed most (50%+) before reaching age 5. When we have so many more elderly than before, naturally the status and care for any particular elder is lower.